March 8, 2023: Best Buy is famous for installing TVs and home theatre systems. Now, Geek Squad is helping to set up virtual hospital rooms.

On Tuesday, the consumer electronics retailer said it had struck a three-year management with Atrium Health, a North Carolina-based healthcare system, enabling a hospital-at-home program. Atrium Health is related to Advocate Health, one of the largest healthcare nonprofits in the country.

Best Buy’s Geek Squad going as patients’ homes, is setting technology that remotely monitors their heart price, blood oxygen level or other vitals and trains the patient or others in the house on how to use the devices. The information would then be shared with doctors and nurses through the telemedicine area from Current Health.

Best Buy began, which set up virtual-care systems for ten hospitals in and around Charlotte, North Carolina, in mid-February. The company said it aims to have 100 patients in the program daily, roughly equivalent to a midsized hospital but without a building.

Best Buy and Atrium did not say any specific financial terms but said Atrium would buy the devices from Best Buy and utilize Geek Squad services for installation and retrieval when the patient is cleared from care. Patients pay Atrium through their insurance, which includes Medicare or Medicaid.

Best Buy Health’s President Deborah Di Sanzo said that the Geek Squad doing the setup leaves the doctors and nurses free focusing on patients’ Health.

“This smooths out that connection amid technology and care,” she stated.

Best Buy’s home hospital program represents the recent push to turn health care into a meaningful revenue driver. Its healthcare expansion comes as sales of other consumer electronics slow.

Like retailers like Walmart and Target, Best Buy has seen consumers buy lesser big-ticket and discretionary items as they fulfil more for food and housing. A lot of consumers also purchased or upgraded their laptops, smartphones, kitchen appliances and different similar products during the early stages of the pandemic.

The retailer anticipates a same-store sales decline of 3% and 6% in the financial year, with most of that decrease coming in the first six months.

Over the previous five years, Best Buy has acquired three healthcare companies: GreatCall, making easy-to-use cell phones and connected health gadgets and provides emergency answer services for ageing adults; Critical Signal Technologies, one more senior-focused firm; and Current Health, a tech concern based in the United Kingdom helping with remote patient monitoring and telehealth. Best Buy also sells health and wellness gadgets, including hearing aids and fitness trackers.